Due to recent advances in technology, computing device users are now able to enjoy many features that provide an improved user experience, such as playing various media and multimedia content on personal, laptop, or handheld computers, as well as mobile phones and other portable media devices. In some multimedia environments, a computing device has access to a computer-readable medium storing media files such as Moving Picture Experts Group audio layer-3 (MP3) files and Windows® Media technologies audio (WMA) and video files. The computing device typically organizes the media files into playlists when the compressed media files are played on the computer.
Conventionally, users must expend considerable time and energy to build a playlist of media items (e.g., video files, music files, photos, etc.) of any complexity. Media items must be individually selected and added to each playlist. In addition to individual selection of media items for playlists, conventional systems also provide some automatic playlist generation with filters. For example, Windows® Media Player 10 by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., features several automatically generated playlists based upon filtering of media items. For example, the media player may collect media items that are highly rated for an automatic playlist.
In addition, conventional systems allow a user to create an auto playlist based upon user-selected filters, whereby each additional filter is capable of reducing the total number of media items in the playlist. All filters are assigned the same weight, whereby each filter may affect the playlist with similar potential influence. For example, an auto playlist may be created by specifying only those media items with a particular term in the title and written before a particular date. Such an auto playlist applies all filters equally, excluding all media items without the required term and written after the specified date. In some instances, this may exclude all media items, rendering no media items in the playlist.